Sudan: Thousands attend funeral of former premier

KHARTOUM, Sudan

Thousands of Sudanese attended the funeral ceremony of former Prime Minister Sadiq al-Mahdi, who died of the novel coronavirus in a hospital in the UAE on Thursday.

People stood on both sides of the road from the Khartoum airport to the city of Omdurman, where he was buried alongside his great-grandfather, Al-Mahdi.

Head of Sudan’s Sovereign Council Abdul Fatah Alburhan, members of the council, Prime Minister Abdallah Hamdok, ministers, and other political leaders attended the arrival of al-Mahdi's body to Omdurman.

Al-Mahdi was born in December 1935 in Khartoum, he got his master’s degree in Economy from Oxford University in 1957.

He was the last democratically elected prime minister whose government was overthrown in 1989 by a military coup led by former President Omar Al-Bashir, who was ousted in April 2019 under pressure of mass protests.

Al-Mahdi was a well-known Sudanese political figure, who has played an important role in the public affairs and has also written several books addressing the situation in Sudan, political Islam and Sharia laws in Islam.